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Addition by Subtraction
Andy Weissman – Feb 11, 2018
“Dangerfield eliminated everything from his act but the setups and punchlines” Alex Halberstadt’s essay on Rodney Dangerfield is a masterclass on how to improve by reduction. Dangerfield worked for decades as a comedian until he figured out the thing, his [...] Read more
Streaming The Olympics
Fred Wilson – Feb 11, 2018
Yesterday morning something amusing happened. My friend and I were headed out to go skiing and we both got texts from our children asking for the logins to our cable accounts. I thought to myself that there must be tens [...] Read more
Video Of The Week: Blockchains: A Shift (Back)Toward Decentralization
Fred Wilson – Feb 10, 2018
Last week I posted a video that the folks at Upfront Ventures did on the current investor mindset in crypto. There are few more videos in this Upfront series and today I am posting one about the shift towards decentralization [...] Read more
USV Level Up Series
Lauren Young – Feb 8, 2018
As our portfolio grows, we can help make more of an impact if we leverage the power of our vast network. One part of that effort in scaling impact is to create an “ambassador-like” program. Our intention is to help [...] Read more
John Perry Barlow
Fred Wilson – Feb 8, 2018
John Perry Barlow understood what the Internet was, what it could be, and what it must be before most of us did. He passed away yesterday and the Internet filled with remembrances. Here are some of the best that I [...] Read more
How To Think About Selloffs
Fred Wilson – Feb 7, 2018
The crypto markets had a good day yesterday but have been down a lot since peaking in early January. Bitcoin peaked at almost $20,000USD in mid December and has gone down by roughly 60% since then. Ethereum peaked at almost [...] Read more
Velocity by Code Climate
Albert Wenger – Feb 7, 2018
Today our portfolio company Code Climate is launching its new “Velocity” product into public beta. The product provides teams with data driven insights into the speed of their development process. It answers important questions, such as where in the process do engineers have to wait (e.g. long continuous integration times or long wait for code to be reviewed)? Or, how much work in progress is accumulating (and how much risk does that contain)? For more examples of the types of insights provided by Velocity, you can see the product launch page. Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Spurious Correlation (Cont’d)
Albert Wenger – Feb 7, 2018
Last Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced the topic of spurious correlation. Since then I have discovered a site that gives some fantastic examples of (potentially) spurious correlations. Here is one: The coefficient of correlation is 0.9926, i.e. almost 1 (which would [...] Read more
Quizlet – The World’s Largest User Generated Learning Platform
Fred Wilson – Feb 6, 2018
On the occasion of our portfolio company Quizlet ‘s announcement of a new round of funding today , I thought I’d talk about what led us to Quizlet and why it is poised to be a game changer in education. Read more